ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue has decided to issue a Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) to bar the officials of the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from manually processing the sales tax refund in cases where the Expeditious Refund System (ERS) has rejected the claims, filed electronically in future.

Sources told Business Recorder here on Thursday that the FBR will stop manual processing of sales tax refund claims in future where the ERS rejects the claims. At present if the sales tax refund claim does not qualify for the ERS, the same be referred to field formations to thoroughly scrutinise it. Under the existing procedure, if the ERS clears the claim, it becomes eligible to be processed electronically. Otherwise, the claim would be referred to the field formations for manual verification of documents and scrutiny of the data. In case the ERS forwards the sales tax refund claim to the relevant Regional Tax Office (RTO), it has to go through the normal process for verification of documents.

Sources said that the FBR will notify that if the ERS rejects a refund claim, the same may not be issued manually by the field formations. Under the new development, the FBR has sent the SRO to the Law and Justice Division for vetting. As soon as the SRO is cleared by the Law Division, the FBR will notify the decision to bar the IRS officials from manual processing of claims in cases where the ERS rejects the claims. This would totally eliminate the processing of the sales tax refund claims under the manual system, sources added.